The Pope's Assassin

by Luís Miguel Rocha

  "I forgive you. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit." He made the sign of the cross as he said each word. "Follow me, and put that away. Show some respect for my church," he whispered, and left.

  Rafael waited a few seconds, holstered the gun in the front of his jacket, and left the confessional, lighter, free of sins. He followed Robin to the sacristy. He looked around for acolytes, priests, auxiliary people; he didn't want to be surprised. It was ironic not to feel safe in the house of the Lord. If you couldn't find safety there, it existed nowhere in the world.

  They left the church from a side door, which opened onto a cream colored corridor. They passed a door with a plaque that read Sacristy and two more, Secretary, and the other unidentified. At the end Robin opened a final door. The plaque bore his own name, Father Robin Roth. He waited for Rafael and let him go in first, as good manners dictate, then he closed and locked it.

  "Would you like a drink?"

  "I'm fi ne, thanks."

  "Sit down," he invited, pointing at two stuffed chairs in the offi ce. A desk at the back displayed a computer screen, which was on; two bookcases with shelves from floor to ceiling filled one of the walls. A simple cross hung on the other wall, without Christ, but only an engraving on the horizontal arm with the three letters that were the soul of the Society, IHS.

  Rafael kept his hand on the gun, inside the pocket of his jacket, as if he were cold.

  "No one's going to hurt you in here," Robin assured him.

  "Start talking, Robin. I don't have all day."

  Robin sat down and sighed. It wasn't a subject he wanted to take on. "Were you with Gunter?"

  "Until the end."

  "That must have been shitty."

  Rafael agreed. A silent look said it all. Sure, it was shitty, one more image to forget, a friend to erase from memory, a past, a life. Fuck it. He'd deal with it later, one day when everything was confounded in a mass of dreams, thoughts, things that were and others that were not, a fog that time always had the ability to create to attenuate sorrow and happiness, the good and the bad.

  "Have you ever heard of the Secret Monition?" Robin asked, cross ing his legs for more comfort.

  "Of course. Its authority was attributed to Claudio Acquaviva, one of the first superior generals of the Society of Jesus in the seventeenth century. According to my memory, it was all a forgery by some Pole who was expelled from the society."

  "Do you know what it was for?" Robin asked in a professorial tone.

  "According to malicious tongues, it was instructions and methods for helping the society gain importance and influence in communities they infiltrated and in other institutions of power. Am I right?"

  "Correct."

  Robin got up from the chair and went to the desk. He took a key out of his pocket and opened a drawer. Rafael took the gun inside his jacket pocket in his hand. Robin took out an ancient book, whose cover was coming apart. It had seen better days. He returned to the chair and handed the book to the Italian.

  "What's this?"

  "Read it."

  Rafael felt the book, turned it over in his hands, looked at the cover, the title page, the back page, tried to identify a certain odor; the exte rior gave no clue whatsoever, no engraving, just brown leather, worn by time. He opened it. The first three pages were blank, yellowed, frayed, almost sticking together. On the fourth page he understood every thing. Stamped in capital letters, MONITA SECRETA, and in smaller letters, a subtitle, Methods and Advice. The name of the author was below, a little indistinct, Ignatius Loyola, and the year, 1551.

  "Interesting," Rafael murmured. He turned to the next page, where the text began in Spanish.

  "The Monition is one of Loyola's works?"

  "Exactly. He always knew what he wanted for the society, and he left it in writing. What you have in your hand is the reason for our suc cess and longevity," Robin explained.

  The Secret Monition was a polemical work that many insisted didn't exist or was a fraud. There was always constant doubt about its author ship. It was attributed to Acquaviva, the superior general between 1581 and 1615, always with great uncertainty, but no one dared once to claim that Loyola was the author. This fact was new.

  "Why was this necessary?" Rafael wanted to know. "Why such intransigence?"

  "Don't speak nonsense," Robin criticized him. "We're not a reli gious order, and you know it."

  "Then what are you?"

  Robin didn't answer. He was searching for the right words.

  "What are you, Robin?" Rafael insisted.

  "We are the front line of the Roman Catholic Church."

  "Please, Robin. Spare me the bullshit."

  "Since 1523."

  "Now you have ten more years?" Rafael mocked. "Didn't the found ing in Paris occur in 1534 in Saint-Denis?"

  "You don't know the half of it, Rafael. Only two minutes ago you didn't know Saint Ignatius was the author of the Monition," Robin admonished.

  Rafael had to concede the point. He was there for answers, and Robin was providing them. Rafael let him go on.

  "You should know about Saint Ignatius's voyage to Jerusalem in 1523." Robin didn't wait for Rafael to confirm. History said that Saint Ignatius had had visions and various spiritual experiences in Manresa. He decided to go to Jerusalem and devote himself to saving souls. He and some followers had gone to Rome at the time of the event to ask for Pope Adrian the Sixth's authorization. That's the offi cial version. But Loyola was never interested in going to Jerusalem. That was mean ingless for him. He had a project, a vision, and if, in order to achieve it, he had to do a favor for someone, he would do it."

  "Then who sent him to Jerusalem?"

  "The cardinal of Florence, Giulio de' Medici," Robin revealed.

  "It was Clement the Seventh who asked him to go to Jerusalem?" Rafael wanted to verify. He couldn't afford any misunderstandings.

  "Of course it was."

  "What did the pope want him to do there?"

  "Note that Giulio de' Medici was still not pope in September. He became pope only in November, and Loyola helped him with that. The correct question is, What did the cardinal of Florence want him to look for there?" Robin clarified, stroking his beard.

  Rafael waited for the answer. What the hell would it be? Robin delayed on purpose.

  "I'm dying of thirst from so much talking."

  "You're not going to stop now, are you?" Rafael grumbled.

  Robin laughed lightly. He was enjoying this.

  "What was he looking for?"

  "Papers," Robin answered, watching the reaction.

  "Papers?" Rafael was surprised.

  "Parchments," Robin specifi ed.

  Rafael had been sent several times for parchments and papyri that the church considered important for one reason or another. Jordan, Syria, Israel, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, as well as western Europe. Sometimes as a mere courier, other times as a thief or buyer, depending on the case or who possessed them. There was a black market in manuscripts, Rafael knew well. It was more than probable that it had existed for centuries or even millennia. Given that Loyola went to Jerusalem to recover parchments for the church five hundred years ago, the idea was not unbelievable.

  "Loyola went to Jerusalem and returned shortly afterward," Rafael refl ected.

  "It was extremely quick," Robin added. "If it were today, he would have gone and returned the same day. Considering the travel condi tions in the sixteenth century, he traveled fast. He spent only twenty days in Jerusalem."

  Rafael nodded his head in agreement. "So what were the parchments?"

  "Parchments that mentioned parchments that talked about bones," Robin said cryptically.

  Parchments that talked about parchments that talked about bones, Rafael repeated mentally. Nothing strange. Many of the sepulchers most visited by tourists in modern times owed their existence to information about their exact location found in ancient texts. It was customary to record in several places the locations of those who had depart
ed this world.

  "You know as well as I do that Jewish funeral rites in Jerusalem in the first century were very different from ours," Robin continued.

  "I have some idea, but I'm not well versed in the subject."

  "I understand. You're more versed in how they put their dead in caves rather than burying them," Robin said a little scornfully.

  Rafael said nothing. He who speaks truth does not deserve punishment.

  "In general the Jews did not bury their own as frequently as we do, or didn't bury them completely. They put them in tombs carved in the rock. There could be one or many chambers, well carved or not, depending on the owner or how much money he had, and they were constructed for entire families, except for the women who mar ried into other families. They washed the corpse with water, always from top to bottom, so that impurities from the feet didn't contami nate other parts of the body. Then they applied oils and perfumes. The corpse was wrapped in a linen shroud, a sadin. Sometimes they used expensive, imported, woven cloth, but we know that He was wrapped in a new linen shroud. This whole procedure was carried out by Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, according to the Holy Scriptures. The arms were stretched along the sides of the body, and the feet tied before wrapping the corpse in the shroud. There was a clear separation between the head and the body. The head was never covered by the sadin. What covered the head was called a sudarion."

  "A burial cloth," Rafael repeated.

  "This way, if the dead man"—Robin sketched quotation marks with his fingers—"should come back to life, he would not suffocate. There are numerous stories of relatives who found their dear departed sitting up, waiting for them inside the tomb. One of them is about Anaias, who was found waiting for his family sitting in the tomb, and went on to live more than twenty-five more years."

  "I've heard of him."

  "From this custom in antiquity, the Byzantines began to install small bells in their cemeteries connected by a cord to the coffi n. It could be activated if the dead should wake up."

  Rafael knew about this custom. There was even possible evidence from very ancient European cemeteries. With advances in medicine these customs disappeared, but in Latin countries, where they interred the dead as quickly as possible, it was not rare to find on the lids of exca vated coffi ns fingernail scratches of those who had awakened too late.

  "The Jewish custom was to keep the corpses in niches carved in stone walls in places called kokhim. Unless the death occurred from mutilation or execution, relatives always wanted to be certain their loved one was dead, and not in a kind of coma between sheol, the world of the dead, and that of the living. People were afraid of being buried alive. So they visited their dead for three days or more, not only to verify the actual death, but because this was part of the ceremony. They prostrated themselves before the corpse in respect and used lotions and potions so that the passage to sheol was made correctly. In any case, the subsequent visit to the tomb of Christ was a perfectly normal custom established in the Jewish community. The body remained in the kokhim for a year or more. Because of the geological and climatic conditions of Jerusalem, at the end of a year the body would be totally decomposed, and another ritual began. The bones were taken from the kokhim and placed in ossuaries, stone chests, normally engraved with the name or names of the dead inside. They were then deposited in another place in the tomb, another chamber or space, depending on how the tomb was constructed. No two tombs were alike. Also there were excavated trenches, the ossilegium, where the bones of previ ous generations reposed. It was not uncommon for the dead man to awaken during the ritual of three days' visitation. There are even some who claim . . ." Robin hesitated. Even for him it was a sacrilege to sug gest such a theory.

  "That's what happened to Lazarus," Rafael concluded for him.

  Robin looked disdainfully at him."Do you also believe this theory?"

  "I neither believe it nor disbelieve it. It makes no difference to me whether Jesus rose from the dead or never died. I'm an arm or leg, not the head or heart of the church," he explained coolly.

  "You're the arm or leg because the church today doesn't have a head. The society was always the front line and cornerstone of the Catholic Church."

  "Perinde ac cadaver, Robin. Your oath," Rafael quoted with a sarcastic smile. He opened the book and leafed through it. "I'll bet it's here somewhere."

  "Cut the shit," Robin swore, and got up and grabbed the Secret Monition out of Rafael's hands. "Don't give me demagogy."

  "To obey the pope like a cadaver. Loyola's fault. It was your idea. If it doesn't serve you now . . ." Rafael continued to provoke him.

  "You know perfectly well why it doesn't serve us," Robin pointed out bitterly. "Ratzinger himself made his decision. You can't blame us for that."

  "I'm just saying you obey the pope blindly, as was proposed from the beginning, all the time, not just when it's convenient for you."

  "Fuck you, Santini," Robin said, furious. "You don't know what you're talking about."

  Rafael controlled himself. He didn't want Robin to lose patience completely. There were still things to explain.

  "Maybe you're right. You're much better informed about these things than I." He tried to calm their tempers.

  "The society always has the higher interest of the church in mind. History proves it," Robin argued, still a little irritated. "We went out on missions to every corner of the earth, converting more faithful than any other religious order, new people for the ranks of the church. We went where no other Christian had ever gone, and are still established there today. We preach the word of the Lord in the language the faith ful understand, thinking about them, and not the costs. We invented confession, plenary indulgences, and gave the church the power of omnipresence. If the leaders of the church weaken and decide to betray us, should we continue to serve blindly?" He paused to let his words sink in. "Ad maiorem Dei gloriam is what the society proclaims, and not Ad maiorem papam gloriam."

  It was not worth pursuing the argument. Rafael shifted uncomfort ably in his chair. He wasn't going to continue a one-sided discussion. It was obvious to him that the society owed respect to the pope, and once they depended on him directly, even more respect. There was a huge divide between the Holy See and the Society of Jesus, the white pope and the black pope. Which one was most powerful? He couldn't say. His duty was to defend Ratzinger, and he would do it until the end.

  "You mentioned parchments that referred to other parchments that spoke of bones." Rafael returned to the subject that really inter ested him.

  "There were."

  "Put it simply."

  Robin sighed. This was the most delicate subject. He'd already told Rafael too much, more than he should have, some of which might blacken the reputation of the society and the good name of Saint Igna tius, but nothing compared with what was coming. Rafael had been the one to ask, and would be the one to suffer the consequences.

  "Since Jesus died, though there have always been questions"—he searched for the right word—"what happened to him."

  "He arose on the third day," Rafael objected.

  "That's the fairy tale they tell in catechism."

  "We don't need any other," Rafael argued. One shouldn't compli cate what was simple.

  "It was good enough, Santini—in fact, for many years—but things changed with the Inquisition."

  "The Inquisition is always to blame," he replied.

  "The Inquisition, as you know, created antibodies. The Jews, who had no love for Catholics, earned our hatred, a hatred that endures even today."

  Robin continued to relate how the Jews who fled started actual expeditions to the Holy Land, sometimes disguised as converted Chris tians or even as Muslims. The remains of parchments began to appear. Nothing special at first, later parchments from Jerusalem, Qumran, Syria, and the Middle East. Miqwa'ot, tombs, ossuaries. The church tried to keep on top of these discoveries, paid thieves and tomb robbers to intercept whatever was excavated, but that Hanukkah gang—Robin's
words—always defended themselves well. In the time of Leo X in 1517, rumors were heard for the first time of the discovery of a parchment that identified the location of the tomb that held Christ, and that text mentioned another parchment that had never been heard of before . . . the Gospel of Jesus.

  "The what?" Rafael asked, astonished. Had he heard right? He got up and took off his jacket. He needed air. "What parchment is it that mentions that gospel?"

  "The Gospel of Mary Magdalene."

  "But that didn't appear until the nineteenth century."

  "It reappeared in the nineteenth century is a better way to put it. Loyola never succeeded in bringing it to Rome."

  "It's too much to take in at one time," Rafael complained.